A 14-year-old boy who said he was merely imitating his pro wrestling heroes when he killed a young playmate was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole--a fate that some jurors and even the prosecutor say is too harsh. Broward County Judge Joel T. Lazarus imposed the mandatory sentence on Lionel Tate, calling his actions "cold, callous and indescribably cruel."

A former San Fernando Valley civic leader who was married to two women simultaneously has been sentenced to life in prison in Florida for murdering his wife there during a confrontation over his double life. David R. Miller, 42, former president of the Granada Hills Chamber of Commerce and founder of the San Fernando Valley Leadership Foundation, must serve 25 years in prison before he is eligible for parole, said Joan Shannon of the Seminole County state attorney's office.

January 21, 1993 | GREG BRAXTON and STEVE WEINSTEIN, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

The scene could have come from a number of Martin Scorsese films or a low-budget thriller: a distraught man shooting his former wife point-blank in the head and emptying his gun into her felled body as horrified onlookers ran. But on Tuesday night, the scene played not as fiction but as horrifying fact in front of shocked viewers of Los Angeles-area TV newscasts that ran a tape showing a man killing his ex-wife at a Florida cemetery in front of a tabloid-TV camera crew.

A sailor from Oklahoma City who served in the Persian Gulf was killed in a parking lot altercation here, police said Sunday. Petty Officer 3rd Class Harold J. Mansfield Jr., who was black, was shot to death Friday night by a white motorist, police said. Witnesses said the shooting followed an argument in which racial epithets were used. Mansfield, 22, was assigned to the carrier Saratoga, which returned to Mayport Naval Station at Jacksonville several weeks ago.

A storm of controversy erupted here Thursday after blood poured from the nose of a convicted murderer as he was hit with 2,300 volts in Florida's brand-new electric chair, prompting the state Supreme Court to stay an execution scheduled for today. Allen Lee Davis, 54--who at 350 pounds was known as "Tiny"--was put to death for the murders of a pregnant woman and her two daughters during a robbery 17 years ago.

Prints from a severed finger were being used to track down the gunmen who killed the owner of an auto body shop. Detectives discovered the finger inside Bowen Auto Body, where Spurgeon Bowen, 47, was shot dead Wednesday while arguing with three men, police said. It was unclear what started the dispute. Investigators were not sure how the finger was cut off. They are using its print to search for the gunman who apparently lost it and the others involved.

An abortion protester sued by the family of a slain doctor has apparently settled the case by giving up a piece of land he used to stage noisy demonstrations against a clinic next door. The family of Dr. David Gunn had accused abortion foe John Burt of inciting the man who shot Gunn to death in 1993. Though the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, one result seemed obvious: A new sign has been posted on a sliver of land Burt owned next to a Pensacola, Fla.

State regulators are trying to take control of a nursing home where they say elderly residents have been killed and raped by mentally ill patients. The Ambrosia Home, which has 75 residents, placed some of its frail elderly residents in a locked wing with violent, mentally ill residents, said officials of the Agency for Health Care Administration in Tampa, which licenses nursing homes. The agency shut down Ambrosia's 23-bed locked wing last week.

Former minister Paul Hill on Friday received the maximum sentence of two life terms in prison for violating the new federal clinic-protection law in the shotgun slayings of an abortion doctor and his bodyguard. Next week, a judge will decide whether Hill should get the electric chair on state murder charges in the slayings. Hill, 40, of Pensacola, is the first person prosecuted under the federal law against using violence or otherwise interfering with those entering abortion clinics.